RedHanded - Episode 170 - Halloween Special Pt 1: Whiskey Cannibals & Blanket Hags

Episode Date: October 22, 2020

As is Halloween tradition at RedHanded - we bring you a story swap! This year, Suruthi goes rogue with a story of colonial cannibalism, while Hannah takes us to Germany for a stomach-churning, true house of horrors... Merch: http://www.redhandedshop.com/ Sources: www.redhandedpodcast.com   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed Special. Halloween special. Halloween special.

I feel, we don't do any other specials, do we? No. We kind of did a Christmas special last year where we talked about Jean Benet Ramsey. Apart from that, we're not very thematic here at Red Handed because we just like to do whatever the fuck we want to do. Yeah, can't fucking stand a theme, to be honest. No, me either. Apart from at a theme park for you.

You feel very strongly about a theme at a theme park. I do feel that. We were talking about this when we were in the car. We went past like a sign for Thought Park. I was like, should we just fuck it off and go to Thought Park? There'll be no one there. Anyway, what I don't like about Alton Towers is that it doesn't have a specific theme running through it. It's like, am I at a country mansion? Am I underground? Am I in space? Yeah, it makes no sense to me you're everywhere and nowhere at the same time you're at Alton Towers please Alton Towers would you like to sponsor us we can give you an excellent readout but if not don't worry about it promise not to mention that girl getting her legs chopped off oh god do you not remember that I do remember that very vividly as soon as you said that by the look on my face did it not look like I just horribly remembered that horrible thing I don't think anyone's been dismembered at thought park maybe they should sponsor us instead let's just stick to that the worst thing that can happen there is I drown who knows we'll see one day when we're allowed back outside we'll go there but anyway speaking of

maybe less horrible things than that today is as you guys will have guessed, this week is rather, should I say, the very first of our Halloween story swaps, which is very exciting. I still think 2017 is my favourite ever episodes of the show because they were just so good. So we'll see if we can top that. For those of you who don't know, perhaps you are new to Red Handed Town, Red Handed Land, Red Hand-handed sure. When it is Halloween, we do a story. So if you have ever listened to the show before, apart from a Halloween episode, you'll usually know that we do one story per show, but not at Halloween. We do a story each.

I don't know what Cerruti's is. Cerruti's doesn't know what mine is. And we tell each other them and you listen to them. And then there might be an ad in between, depending on whether you listen on Patreon or not. And if you don't listen on patreon get on it absolutely www.redhandedpatreon.com that's not even it is this part of our plan hannah to get people to convert over to patreon to give them the wrong address good exactly and for all you brits because i think it is you guys who are spelling patreon incorrectly there's

no i in it it's patreon p-a-t-r-e-o-n dot com slash red handed the link will be in the episode description below but no really you should go over there because after this immediately after this show as we do every single week there will be an under the duvet episode out this week we are talking about the brand new 60 minutes australia documentary called maddie and the monster of course about madeline mccann and the updates that are going on with that german guy that they've arrested about it we're going to talk about it all over there and then also on tuesday we released our monthly ten dollar and up bonus patreon episode which is on the eyeball gouger Charles

Albright. So if that sounds like, you know, it's something you might want to know a bit more about, head on over to patreon.com slash redhanded. And one final tidbit of information before we kick off with today's stories. Merch, guys, merch, merch, merch. When are you listening to this? I don't know. But if you were listening to it around about the 23rd of October, that is when we are launching two brand new lines of merch on redhandedshop.com. And it's going to be the Not In This Economy merch and another special fan designed bit of merch. So head on over now and check that out. If you are still yet to get yourself some spooky bitch merch, it is going away on the 31st of October. So if you want it, get it before then. So that's it. Right, now let's

start. Should I go first? Yeah, please do actually. I feel like I need to warm up. I need to limber. You limber up. You do some stretches while I tell you this horrible story. Okay, do some brain stretches. So today, in my undying pressure to scare you all and find a horrible story, I've gone a bit rogue. And I was just really, really struggling to find anything that was like super just gonna deliver the fear. But I remembered this story that I had once heard. And I was like, was that even real? Because when I heard it, it really stuck with me.

So I was like, if I can find out that it's real, I'm gonna do that story. But it is rogue, I've warned you. I'm really intrigued as to how you're going to go more rogue than Hindu child sacrifice. It's roundabout there. I mean, I believe if anyone can do it, it's you. But I just don't know where this is going to go. Thank you very much.

Let's go. So I am bringing you guys a history lesson consisting of what else but colonial atrocities, cannibalism and whiskey, all from one of the darkest periods in human history, the Belgian colonisation of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Everyone ready? It's gonna be horrible. So some of you, just with that very brief introduction, will know where I'm about to go with this and know that it involves James Jameson. Again, shit name. Why? He's their son. Almost as good as Brad Bradley. Almost as good as Brad Bradley. But he is nowhere

as good a person as Brad Bradley. This guy's a fucking shitbag. And he also happened to be, of course, the wealthy heir and the great grandson of John Jameson, the famous Irish whiskey distiller. So the Jameson whiskey family were, of course, a big fucking deal in the British Empire in the 19th century, which is where we're going to be doing much of our hanging out with my particular story today. But despite the family business, rather than showing an interest in the intricacies of distillation

and the nuances between single malts and blends, oh no, James Jameson was much more interested in the natural world, plants and animals and such. But he also had a much darker edifice, anthropophagy, and that's cannibalism to me and you. And this spooky combination of interests would set in motion a series of truly disturbing and macabre events that would land the Jameson family on the front pages and headlines of newspapers around the Jameson family on the front pages and headlines of newspapers around the Western world for all the wrong reasons. But before we get to that particular atrocity, we have to start with a few earlier ones. Baby atrocities. Baby atrocities.

Stepping stones to the big daddy. You gotta crawl before you can commit genocide. So on the 26th of January 1885, the Khartoum of Sudan, which at the time, interestingly, was a regional centre of trade and a military outpost run by Egypt backed by the British, and it fell to the Islamic warlord Mahdi Mohammed Ahmed. And following this victory, the Madis forces pushed on. They wanted to capture an area known as Equatoria. This all sounds so fake. This is all real. This is what's going on. This place is called Equatoria. It's like in fucking Avatar where the really difficult to get hold of mineral is called unobtainium. That's exactly what it sounds like. Just it's in the middle somewhere. Equatoria. No problem. Equatoria, we'll call it that. It is today a part of South Sudan.

So basically, the maddest want to push on because they want to capture Equatoria and they also want to capture its governor, a man named Emin Pasha. So Emin fled this area and he went to a place named Lake Alberta with his troops. But in doing so, the problem was he isolated himself from his British and Egyptian allies, making his ability to be rescued by them far more difficult. Bad move on Emin's part. But by February 1886, Emin was still able to communicate via letters. And this is how he found out that Egypt was abandoning Equatoria and subsequently him.

So he's quite fucked at this point. The warlords want him. He's in hiding. And his allies aren't coming to help him. They've given up. And the British government, who were also his allies, were also definitely not interested in embarking on what would have been pretty much an absolute suicide mission just to rescue Pasha. But interestingly, for some reason, the British press really played up the plight of Emin Pasha and were like calling for him to be saved. Maybe there's some like specific intricacy in there as to why they were doing this.

I don't really know, but they really took this on as their campaign. And so in November 1886, a rich Scottish businessman named William MacKinnon got his other rich friends together and formed what they called the Amin Pasha Relief Committee. And at the time, wealthy private citizens funding big armed expeditions into foreign lands was actually pretty common. And they actually managed to raise £32,000, which in today's money is £4.2 million, just to go rescue this one guy who's got himself fucking trapped out in the middle of nowhere. So with the money in place, they knew exactly who the right man was to lead the mission. A man named Henry Morton Stanley. He was a Welsh

American explorer, journalist, soldier, colonial administrator, author and politician. It's kind of like the jobs you could only have been in the 19th century. It's a lot of jobs. It's a lot of jobs. Too many. Not in this economy. Well, actually, no, in this economy more than any other economy, because no one can keep a job for more than five fucking minutes. This is true. Definitely in this economy. But despite all of his various job titles, Stanley was a very controversial man, to say the least. And we'll come on to understand a bit about why in a moment. Maybe you're asking, why was he the right man for the job? Well, to answer that, we need to go back even a little bit further back in time,

about 10 years to 1871. Stanley had been working as a freelance journalist for a few years. And in March 1871, he had been sent to Zanzibar by the New York Herald to find a missing man named Dr. Livingston. That name might sound familiar to some people. I feel like he's quite a well-renowned person. He went to Africa, got himself lost, and this guy had to go find him. So Livingston was many things. He was a doctor, obviously. He was also a Christian missionary and a renowned explorer of Africa.

And he actually vanished when he'd gone looking for the true source of the Nile in 1866. What were these fucking crazy white men doing? They're just like, I'm just gonna go. I'm gonna see what happens. It's gonna be great. Didn't a guy do this like a couple of years ago, go to Africa and then get lost. And then people were like, don't go help him because he deserves it. I can't remember what that was about. I mean, I can't remember that. But that sounds like a great story. Such a great story. But I can't remember any of the specific details. Journalism. I will find them.

Maybe I'll talk about them another time. Yeah, that time with the stuff and the things. With the stuff that happened, that guy who went missing. People know somebody's yelling at their phone. So it seemed when Dr. Livingstone went missing that all hope was lost. But in December 1871, Stanley found him in Western Tanzania against all the odds. Like, what are the chances of finding this one random man in Africa that's just gone missing? But he does it. And he did it with the help of a powerful Zanzibarian slave trader named Tipu Tib. And remember that name. Not that you're going to forget a name like Tipu Tib because he becomes very important to our story today.

Fun fact about this. There's a 1991 Nintendo game about Stanley's search for Dr. Livingston called Stanley colon the search for Dr. Livingston. And I googled it. It's real. You can go play that game. You can go buy it and play it on Nintendo. Not as good as Planetary Taxi, but whatever. You want to pretend to be like a bushwhacking fucking colonial overlord. It sounds like Where in Time is Carbon San Diego. It feels like it's like one of those. That's very much what the graphics look like when you Google it. So while this mission was lauded as being an amazing expedition by a heroic explorer, the mission was bloody, savage and rife with massive crimes against humanity. Firstly, it lasted 999 days.

It took him almost 1000 days to find this guy. That is crazy. Who is worth that? That is mad. And it started with 228 people, but it ended with just 114 people surviving. So like half the fucking team dies looking for this one man, which is crazy. And Stanley was the only European to survive the entire trip. It just shows you like how fucking rogue this part of the world was at that time. And Tipu Tip, the Afro-Arab slave trader that we mentioned earlier, wasn't just there to lead this white guy through the Congo. He was there for business. And he spent much of the trip slave hunting.

He raided 118 villages, killed thousands of Africans, and enslaved around 2,300 women and children to sell at the Zanzibari slave markets. And Stanley wrote about his travels in Africa in a book called Through the Dark Continent, which was read by none other than King Leopold II of Belgium. He's a baddie. I know about him. He's a baddie. He's a total fucking C-word, to put it mildly. And you'll find out why. I'm pretty sure the Belgian royal family are still like his bloodline. Oh, yeah.

I don't think it's changed since then. No. The stuff we're about to talk about in this, they expressed regret for last year. No apology, specifically no apology. We express regret. In 2019. Okay, never mind. So after old Leopold read this book, he hired Stanley to set up a series of trading stations in the Congo,

apparently to open it up to international trade and to help civilise the region. So Stanley jumped at the chance, but later came to find out that Leopold's true intentions were actually to carve out an entire nation as big as possible that was to be governed, of course, by him. So during 1879, Stanley went there, he built roads and steam ports on the Congo River, all for Leopold, and persuaded native chiefs to sign away their precious lands.

By 1884, Stanley had set up the beginnings of what would become known as the Congo Free State, which is essentially just an enormous slave economy, where King Leopold II of Belgium was God. And by the following year, the Congo was essentially King Leopold II of Belgium was God. And by the following year, the Congo was essentially King Leopold II's private property. And the atrocities that occurred in this new nation are beyond imagination. Leopold policed this new nation with his own military force known as Force Publique. And you see that the main export of this free state was rubber. And as a slave, failing to meet your daily rubber quota was punishable by death. The force publique were known to be unbelievably brutal,

and they were armed with what was known as a chicot, which is like a bullwhip made from hippo hide. And it was common that soldiers of the FP, as it was known, would regularly rape Congolese women, burn down villages, and you'll have all seen these pictures if you know anything about the Belgian Congo. They would amputate the limbs from children of poorly performing slaves on the rubber plantations. So if you go and look at this, there's just picture after picture of men and women sat with like a pile of amputated

children's limbs in front of them. And they would be the limbs of their own children and they would have been cut off by the fp because they didn't hit their rubber quota that day it's some pretty grisly shit so stanley's creation of the congo free state led to the death of 10 million people in just a couple of decades it halved the congolese population and it's just shocking isn't it because like we barely talk about this. Like I don't even remember how I found out about this. But when were we ever told about this? When are we ever talking about this? Never, really.

The only reason I know about it is a friend of mine was the assistant to the Prince of Belgium in Virunga National Park. Oh, wow. Because that's what happens when you go to SOAS. So a friend of mine worked in Virunga National Park in Congo for a year because they needed someone who spoke English and French and he grew up in Geneva. So he just went out there for a year, lived in a tent and just like hung out with gorillas and baboons. And he was like, you get used to living in a tent and also working all the time,

like no days off, nothing. He's like, all there is to do is get blackout fucking drunk. But the Prince of Belgium is, I believe, I don't know what his exact title is but is still the chief executive of verunga national park and lives there most of the time in a fancy tent that they all called le palais they're all like in like bin bag tents and he's just in this like beautiful like gazebo looking thing so the belgian royal family are still very present in congo specifically verunga but i'm sure in lots of other places. Oh, I bet. You're not going to want to give up all this hard work that your fucking ancestor put in

murdering a bunch of people and committing genocide. The important thing to note about this specific period in time and about the Congo Free State is that even at the time, so even in the sort of mid to late 19th century, what was happening in the Congo Free State was deemed as vile. And as people in the West began catching rumours of some of the atrocities committed under Leopold's rule, Stanley, being the man who had sort of facilitated this state being created, his public image began to suffer. So back to MN Pasha, the dude that we met at the beginning, who goes missing. So in 1886, when Stanley was asked to lead the Emin Pasha relief expedition,

and knowing that it was a very popular expedition in the public view of things, he jumped all over it. It was his chance to redeem himself. Little did he realize, though, how much of a fucking shitshow it was going to turn out to be. In fact, it would turn out to be the shitshow of all shitshows, and it would put an end to all civilian-run expeditions to Africa in the 19th century. And by the 1st of January 1887, Stanley was getting ready to set off, assuring the public that this expedition was a humanitarian one

and definitely not a military conquest. So Stanley was actually still officially under King Leopold II's employment at this point, so he had to get permission to go. And Leopold said that he would allow Stanley to go if he took the expedition on a longer route up the Congo River instead of the original shorter route through the East African coast. And although Stanley wrote in his biography that the sole purpose of this expedition was to rescue MN Pasha, in his book, In Darkest Africa, he reveals that there was a secondary objective, which was, dun dun dun, further territorial annexation of the Congo. Oh, surprise! And this guy, this guy, fucking Stanley, right? He went on to get a knighthood,

and there's still a statue of him standing in Wales today. And maybe, you know, that doesn't sound too terrible, but wait till we get to the end, you know, that doesn't sound too terrible. But wait till we get to the end of the story. It doesn't come off well. This Amin Pasha relief expedition he goes on doesn't do anything to help his reputation. So there were 400 applications submitted to be part of this rescue expedition mission, whatever. And of course, because back then all these men just like wanted to go off and go travel and you know go shoot a fucking rhino or whatever it was so he had to choose the officers who were going to come with him and one of the officers that he chose was of course the man that we introduced at the start of the show james jameson the heir to the jameson whiskey fortune

so jameson like i said he's aist, but like his actual thing is he's just going to have to go work in this whiskey business. But he had made quite a name for himself at this point as like a watercolorist and like a guy who knew stuff about plants. Sign me up. Where can I find me one of those? Jameson was bored of his life. I think he yearned for discovery. And this is what led him to join Stanley's expedition and he had to pay a thousand pounds which is about a hundred thousand pounds in today's money to get his place on the team and it's very obvious that they only took him for his money

because what fucking use is a rich watercolor painting posho bastard on a fucking rescue mission into the dangerous heart of the Congo? I don't know but they're like yeah right you can come but you've got to carry your own shit and you've got to pay us a thousand pounds and then you can come and no whinging and no fucking whinging and don't get your watercolors on anything you posho twat leave your easel at home it's too heavy but don't be fooled into thinking that jameson was just along for the ride to paint rare and

exotic flora and fauna oh no he had heard the stories of cannibalism and he wanted to have a look for himself. I know. You are right to gasp, my friend. It gets worse. Never trust a watercolour man. A watercolourist. Don't do it.

A waterman. So Stanley also chose another guy, a 28-year-old man named Edmund Bartolot, to be his second-in-command. And this guy had served in the British Raj, he'd fought in the Second Anglo-Afghan War and the Anglo-Egyptian War. He seemed like the right fit. But Stanley would certainly come to regret choosing either of these men

to be officers on this particular expedition. So on the 21st of January, 1887, they left London and arrived in Cairo the following week. And on the 22nd of February, travelling under the Egyptian flag, they went on to Zanzibar, where they met with Stanley's old acquaintance, the slave trader Tipu Tib. And together they left Zanzibar and arrived at the mouth of the Congo in about mid-March. From there, they pressed on to Leopoldville. Yep, that's what it's called. Fucking kill me. So problems quickly arose, as you can only imagine, with about a thousand hungry, hard-working men on this expedition carrying huge loads. And somehow they've managed to fuck this so badly because they haven't planned for food properly. And now these men are fucking starving. Like I don't know how you get

that so wrong. They've just traipsed out into the fucking Congonese jungle with no food and people are starting to die. So they eventually managed to make it to a village called Yambura looking for rest and food but when they arrived the villagers refused to allow Stanley or the men to stay there. So embracing the classic colonial philosophy of fuck you, I'm white, Stanley and his men attacked the villagers and drove them from their homes. With most of the men by this point starving, falling ill, too weak to continue at the pace that was needed, and many deserting, Stanley decided that he needed to split the men into two groups. So he did that. And then he took the first half of the men, who were the strongest, up to Lake Alberta to try and rescue fucking MN Pasha. And he left the first half of the men, who were the strongest, up to Lake Alberta to try and rescue fucking MN Pasha.

And he left the second half of the team with Bartolot to remain in the village that they had just fucking desecrated to await supplies and more men. Stanley reached Lake Alberta in about December, but with only half of the team that he had left with surviving. I'm just like, how many people have to die to rescue, like, individual men? It's the weirdest concept. But they're rich white men.

They're worth more than us. Precisely. So he eventually gets there, but not after having travelled through places like the Uturi Forest, where the canopy apparently was so dense it appeared to be in perpetual night time. And in the darkness of this jungle, they were attacked by local tribes firing poison darts at them. So this killed quite a lot of people. Food was also still scarce.

Many of them fell ill. Many of them got bitten by random shit. And Lowsmore just ran off like, fuck this shit. It's hell. The closest you're going to get to it on Earth, probably. So Stanley finally reached Lake Alberta and met Emin in April 1888. So when Stanley finally got to Emin, he was shocked to find that Emin had actually carved out a rather comfortable life for himself

and he didn't want to leave and he didn't want to be rescued. In fact, he ended up giving them food and supplies, rescuing his would-be rescuers. So all of that, all those people dead, for absolutely no fucking reason, Emin Bash is like, I'm quite happy in the jungle. I'm just gonna fucking stay here. You couldn't make it up. You couldn't make it up. So for a month, Stanley stays there and argues with Emin because he wants him to come back with him because he has to return with Emin to complete this bullshit mission so that he can redeem his name. He can't just go back empty handed and say, oh, he just doesn't want to come back. It's gonna sound like a lie. Yeah, no one's going to believe that you actually found him. Precisely. Oh, I'm just going to go and drink rum for a month in the jungle and then

come back and be like, I'm sorry. I mean, I tried, but he's just he's not alive anymore. Would you like a watercolour of his face? He's definitely, definitely there. Here's a watercolour painting of him sat in a hammock with a fucking monkey. I don't know. It's so ridiculous. So on the 16th of June, Stanley left after failing to convince Emin to come with him. And he had to go back and find the second group that he'd left behind because he hadn't heard a word from them in ages. So when he got back to the village, he found quite the scene. Bonnie, the last remaining European, and a few starving carriers greeted him.

Bonnie told him of the atrocities and horrors that had occurred in his long absence. Apparently, the second team, like we said, had been left in the command of Edmund Bartolot, who, as it turns out, was a complete fucking lunatic. After Stanley had left them, the second team descended into absolute chaos. Bartolot was unable to maintain order and so resorted to viciously whipping the African members of the crew. At least two of them died from his beatings, not including a 12-year-old boy who he'd been keeping as a personal assistant, but Bartolot kicked and beat to death. So Bonny said that Bartolot would lose his shit over

nothing and become increasingly paranoid, convinced that people were trying to poison him left and right. He even carried a sharpened steel cane that he would use to stab at people and he even bit a woman once and he tried to poison an Arab chief. Basically he's completely descended into madness and these people have been left with him in charge. Another officer is even quoted as saying Bartololot quote, had an intense hatred of anything in the shape of a black man. Apparently one morning, Bartolot was woken by the sound of a native woman beating her drum during

a festival. Incensed, he came at her with a revolver. But luckily her husband ran to save her and ended up blowing Bartolot's head off with the pistol. Oh good! Yeah, good fucking riddance, I think we can say. Finally some good news. Finally some good news.

That we've been waiting for. The problem is, once Bartolet was dead, they were like, who the fuck's the leader now? And he's stabbed everyone else and poisoned the rest of the people. Like, what do we do? So after this, the second group decided that the best thing to do was just leave. So they moved on to another town and tried to sort of settle down there. But things here got even worse.

Some of the surrounding tribes in the area were known to practice cannibalism. And if you thought Bartolot was an evil piece of shit, hold on to your hats because you haven't heard anything yet. Asad Farhan, a Syrian-Sudanese translator that the team had with them, told Stanley how James Jameson, the Irish naturalist and watercolourist and heir to the Jameson whiskey fortune, just in case you didn't remember, had a macabre obsession with cannibalism. So much so, in fact, that he would constantly pester the slave trader Tipu Tib to prove that the tales of cannibal tribes were true.

And he said that if they were, he wanted nothing more than to see it firsthand. He claimed that this was just so he could study the practice of anthropophagy and paint it with watercolors. I mean, maybe this is a testament to just how fucking rich he was. But I feel like if you've got an obsession with cannibalism and you're in an isolated jungle with lots of other people, just keep it to yourself.

But I suppose if you're that rich and entitled, you'd be like, well, I want to do it. Why would I not discuss it? Precisely. I think that's exactly what it is. I think a lot of these kind of like, you know, Victorian gentlemen wouldn't have dreamt of behaving like this when they were back home.

But here in what they called the land of the noble savage life to them was cheap and cash was king and he had all that cash and i think he just let out the true monster that was within him so he apparently goes on about this for fucking weeks to tipu tip so growing frustrated by jameson's constant pleas to watch another human being eaten, Tipu Tib finally gives him, and he went and spoke to some village chiefs who fetched them a young girl who could have been no older than 10 or 11. She was shackled at the wrists. Tipu Tib told Jameson that he had to pay for her first

and then present her to a cannibal tribe living nearby. So Jameson, do you know how he paid for this little girl? Can I guess? Yes. A tea tray. A tea tray? Yeah. No? but living nearby. So Jameson, do you know how he paid for this little girl? Can I guess? Yes. A tea tray. A tea tray? Yeah.

No. A cross-stitch kit. Almost as ridiculous. Okay. Oven gloves. Almost. So close. You're so close.

So close. To pay for this 10-year-old, 11-year-old little girl, Jameson handed over six white handkerchiefs and they gave her to him. Oh my God. I know. Why do you have six handkerchiefs in the first place? Like, what do you use them for? And like, apparently cloth was like a really big deal at the time.

But like, what are you going to do with six handkerchiefs? It's not like it's a big roll of yards and yards and yards of fabric. It's six white handkerchiefs. And also like, has he not been in the jungle for like months at this point? They're going to be covered in snot like there's no way they're going to be unused. I have no clue but that's what he gives them and the negotiation was done. And so with that Tipu Tib and Jameson led the silent little girl into the forest and to the tribe. When they finally tracked this cannibalistic tribe down Tipu Tib Tip told them, quote, this is a present from a white man who desires to see her eaten.

And this is when it's going to get real rough, guys. Because three men from the tribe approached and one plunged a knife twice into the little girl's chest. She didn't make a sound or seem to react at all. It was as though she had accepted her fate. But Farron, the translator,

recalled later that he said it was more likely that she was just paralyzed with fear. After the stabbing, the girl fell to the floor, where she was immediately set upon by cannibals, who began cutting off her legs and arms. They sliced her stomach open, and her intestines were pulled out. Her breasts were sliced off. Every organ was removed and collected there and then. Every part of the poor girl was butchered and finally her head was taken. Not a single bit of the child was left. The tribesmen then divided the meat amongst themselves. Some of the men took what they had into their huts whilst others took the meat down to the river to clean it and prepare it to cook. All the while Farron said

Jameson was crouched over, intently sketching the entire blood-curdling scene. Quickly scampering back to his quarters, he said to finish the sketches with watercolour. I feel like you're running back to your quarters to have a massive wank. Surely. Oh, God! To finish

the sketches with watercolours, you fucking piece of shit. There is no way he wasn't just getting off on this sexually there's no way that he was this obsessed with it and it wasn't to do with that like since when have watercolors been like a time pressured thing exactly like why is it it has to be now has to be right now i have to remember the way the blood was like flowing now and i have to go fucking get my red watercolor out and capture this perfect moment. He's so disgusting. So this is the story that Farron tells Stanley when he comes back. Stanley's aghast by

this, or he says he is. But by the time that he hears about it, Jameson had already died from a fever that he had contracted shortly after this atrocity occurred. And this did actually lead some to say that Farron was just making it all up because, you know, Jameson isn't there to defend himself. But the story of the little girl was substantiated in Jameson's own diary. He had written about it in his own fucking diary. So like, there's no question that it happened. However, it is true that in his diary, Jameson recalled events slightly differently. He claimed that he had never believed the natives were serious and that he thought it was just all a joke until the last minute. What an elaborate joke.

Oh, I've just got this 10-year-old girl, which you've paid for with your snotty rags, but it's a joke. And we have so much time for japes when we're trekking through the jungle. Precisely. Our entire group is falling apart. Men are starving.

They're deserting us. We not only got this girl, but then we fucking traipsed around in the jungle looking for a tribe. And then it was just a joke, though. It was just a joke. Because, you know, those cannibalistic jungle tribesmen, they're known for their great sense of humor.

Like, I'm so surprised that they didn't get your joke. But anyway, like, the whole thing is completely hard to believe obviously like he bought a little slave girl and handed her to a tribe of notorious cannibals like what did he think was going to happen still this didn't stop jameson's widow from publishing his journal in an attempt to clear his name in britain when farron revealed to the world the horrors committed on the amin pasha relief expedition she thought i think that him writing that he thought it was just a joke was going to clear his name and say that he wasn't serious. But of course, all it did was back up Farron's claims. And this story would forever go on to leave a stain on the legacy of the Jamison whiskey family.

Although, I'm guessing, they probably won't tell you about it on a tour of their distillery. Maybe we should go and ask. Yeah, I was just going to say it and be really obnoxious. I mean, I don't drink whiskey. I think it's gross. But I would do it. We've heard some stuff about Congo, actually. Would you care to elaborate on that?

I've also, there's something to do, I can't quite remember, but something to do with watercolours and handkerchiefs and possibly a 10-year-old girl who got eaten. Would you like to tell the entire group? Share with the group. Share with the room. Absolutely. And then we'll just stick our digital recorder mic under her nose or his nose and ask them to explain themselves. I think we go and we just throw white handkerchiefs around as an act of protest. I don't know. We'll think of something. That'll be a great theme day out. Let's do it. This incident, though, as horrible as it is, is, of course, just one of the atrocities that occurred during this very long and bloody period in history.

And the maniacally genocidal behaviour of Europeans in Africa at the time most likely means that as disgusting and harrowing and disturbing as it is, it probably wasn't even the worst thing to have happened. At the beginning of the 20th century, Edmund Dean Morell, a journalist, finally showed the world photos of forced labor, murders, child soldiers, handless people, torture and genocide in Leopold's personal so-called Congo Free State. And you can see all these images if you google Congo Free State. Warning though, it is very, very, very disturbing. And Leopold's rule was seen as so cruel when these stories hit the headlines that even other European leaders who were themselves also

exploiting Africa violently at this time condemned him. So in 1908 due to international pressure the Belgian parliament seized the Congo Free State from King Leopold and placed it under their own governance. The people of Congo weren't given their independence until the 30th of July 1960. Until then they were still being ruled by the fucking Belgians. And like I said they only expressed regret in 2019. So yep that is the story of James Jameson and his love of cannibalism and how he murdered a little slave girl by handing her over to a bunch of cannibals so he could watercolour it. Horrifying enough for you? I feel quite unwell, actually. Yeah, I know.

But well done for taking the colonial route. Thank you very much. Still hammering home our leftist agenda. Precisely. 2020, the year of us forcing our leftist agenda down your fucking throat. Slav it! Have it all. Delicious politics. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life some

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We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts. All right, mine's less colonial, more sort of fritzily. Oh, good contrast.

Yeah, but like, I feel so ill that like, I really don't know if I'm going to be able to get through this. Okay, fine. We're also in the now times rather than the olden days. Oh, good. We're in the todaysles-ish. And we're in Germany where one late spring night, a man and a woman were driving down a dark road through the district of... Oh, also, I don't speak German and I also can't read it. So you're all just going to have to forgive me for these pronunciations of German things because I'm not very good at them. So they were driving through the district of Northheim, I think,

in the Weiserbergland mountains of Germany. And in the back seat of this car being driven by these two people was a woman with a shaved head and she was drifting in and out of consciousness. Then the engine of the couple's old Opel Astra, what a car, suddenly gave out and the woman driving pulled over to knock on the door of a nearby house to call for a taxi. That would make you think that this is an old and timey one, but as I stipulated, it is not. Why don't they have a phone? We don't know. But it does make it

a lot more like horror filming of like your car breaks down and you have to go knock on a door. But don't worry about it. Nothing bad happens to the couple. They're not who you think they are. As the woman is at this door asking for help, the man suddenly called to her and said that their passenger was having a seizure. So instead of asking for a taxi, the lady called for an ambulance. And when the ambulance got there, despite numerous attempts to resuscitate the woman in the back seat, she died in hospital that evening. And something the doctors couldn't ignore were the multitude of untreated injuriesitate the woman in the back seat. She died in hospital that evening. And something the doctors couldn't ignore were the multitude of untreated injuries to the woman's body.

She had bruises, cuts, ligature marks on her ankles, and a severe blunt force trauma to her skull. And, this is really gross, the woman's tailbone, her coccyx, had rot in it, which is a sign of having been forced to sit or lie down in the same position for weeks so it's just like a bed sore times a million oh god that's horrific it's like when you watch those dog rescuers or whatever and those dogs have been chained up in one place for ages and their fucking bones are rotting exactly that oh my god even dislodging your

coccyx hurts like fucking hell like Like that must have been so incredibly painful. And on top of that, this is going to make you feel even worse. Her toenails were either loose or falling off. And these injuries had clearly been sustained over a long period of time. In fact, some of them were necrotic. Oh my God. Grim enough for you? Yeah.

You're off to a great start. It's like she's been forced to sit on like wet concrete for months. Yep, exactly that. Oh, God. Gross. Right, cool. Thanks. I don't even know how to say you're welcome in German, so I'll just leave it.

So the hospital informed authorities the week after this woman died, not immediately for some reason. So the following week was actually the 27th of April 2016. I told you it was todaysles, the nowadays. And German police followed up on this, I suppose, concerned call from the doctor and it led them to a cold, dilapidated old farmhouse in the rural town of Hoxter where they arrested the man and the woman who had been driving the car. And when the police searched the property, they had no idea

what they would find. And what they would find would mean that this house was going to be called the horror house of Hoxter for the rest of all of our natural lives and probably after. So the question we have to ask, well, you could ask it, I'll answer it because I'm the only one that knows. Who was the woman with the shaved head? And who were the couple? And who's the baddies? Who's the goodies? And where is that farmhouse? So we've got to start right at the very beginning with a man called Wilfried, I think. I think it is Wilfried and not Wilfred. Wilfried sounds more German, doesn't it? Is he the man that was driving the car? Mind your business. So Wilfried was born in 1970 in Bochum, a city in West Germany.

And as a child, he attended a special needs school due to a pretty severe learning disability. And a forensic psychologist later figured out that Wilfried had an IQ of just 59. We all know the problems with IQ tests, but let's just use it as a market. That puts him in 3% of the population who have an IQ less than 70. And it's obviously 11 points lower than 70,

so it's significantly lower. We don't know that much about who his parents were. But we do know that as a child, Wilfried was subject to sadistic beatings, often from his drunken father. And if you have listened to our Patreon episode on the warrior gene, you will know that low IQs have been linked to violence in several studies. So go and have a listen to that. When he grew up to be a young man, Wilfried found it quite difficult to hold down a steady job for prolonged periods of time. And in 1991, he was 21 years old, living on welfare, about 50 kilometres from Hoxter,

when he started a relationship with a lady of the same age called Michaela. And then in 1994, Wilfried, still with Michaela, started another relationship with a woman called Sabine. And he met Sabine through a Lonely Hearts advert, just like in Do You Like Pina Coladas? Except it is a different woman. It's not the same woman. Spoilers. These Lonely Hearts ads would become a bit of a USP for Wilfried.

Do they still exist? Surely not. The only one I think I've seen, I'm sure the Metro still do Rush Hour Crush. Ah, classic. I had a Rush hour crush about me once did you oh my god yeah my sister found it

she was like it was like whatever train I was on whatever time be like redhead nose ring tattoo on your foot like I'm in love with you

I know didn't do anything about it what are you meant to do about it are you meant to contact them I think you're supposed to write into the metro and be like it was I

why didn't you is it too late to do it now I don't know I think you're supposed to write into the Metro and be like, it was I. Why didn't you? Is it too late to do it now? I don't know. I think I was shagging someone. I don't know. Oh, mate. I remember not doing it.

I was like, it had to have been me. There's no way. I'm quite a distinctive looking person. There's a joke there about your cat paying for your lack of curiosity. I don't know. I can't make it. What? Because I'm so empty handed now that if I'd just taken up the rush hour crush, then maybe. have been the one well if he was he'll turn up again when he that's how it works that's how it works after just a few months after the rush hour crush equivalent

Wilfried intensely loved bomb Sabine so much that she agreed to marry him after literally like less than six months so her parents not super about it, but they were right to worry because pretty soon after they were married, Wilfried began beating Sabine savagely. It all began when Sabine was making him lunch one day and she burnt the sausages and then that was a crime bad enough for Wilfried to choke her

until she almost lost consciousness. Oh, delightful. Sausages are important, but they're not that important. No, they're not that important. No, they're not that important. And another tip, believe what your parents say about this guy you're going to marry. Maybe if they're like, he looks like a wrongen. Or maybe give it more than six months. Or that. Potentially. Both. Yeah. More dating tips from Hannah and Saruti here at Red Handed slash Empty Handed. Well, I mean, we're both fucking stuck now because I guarantee you we'll be in tier three in two weeks. Oh, yes.

The only thing I have to hang my hat on, my very small hat, is that half of shit is in tier one. So I can go wherever the fuck I want here. Just not to London. Just not into London. And I'm like, what do I do, builder? Do I come see you? Can I do that and then come back to a tier one

and then do I have to isolate? I don't know. We'll figure it out. I'll wait for Boris Johnson to specifically explain it to me. Just shut up at your house. You'll be like, stay away from me. You're from tier three. Don't come any closer. Exactly. I'm in tier one, bitch. So after the sausage incident, the abuse became a daily occurrence and it just got worse and worse. Wilfried would regularly rape Sabine, humiliate her and burn her with a hairdryer and he'd beat her

wearing boxing gloves as well. Sometimes, he'd hold a gas-powered pellet gun to her head and press hot irons onto her arms and her legs

burning through her flesh. That's my worst fear is the hot irons. Being burning. And being burnt. I quite like big blisters though. Obviously, the process of getting burned isn't fun but the blisters that happened afterwards I quite like big blisters though obviously like the process of

getting burned isn't fun but like with the blisters that happened afterwards i quite like them really but i'm a pervert i mean you said it accurately i don't know if i told you this a friend of mine is a doctor and he's doing an a and e rotation at the moment whenever i see him i'm like tell me the most fucking disgusting thing you've seen since the last time i saw you he's like oh well like i've seen a'm like, tell me the most fucking disgusting thing you've seen since the last time I saw you. He was like, oh, well, I've seen a few brains and stuff. But the most interesting thing I learned while working on A&E throughout lockdown is that it only takes three weeks before the British public are so bored that they will start shoving anything up their bumholes. He was literally just like, week three of lockdown.

It was like anything you could think of of someone would come in with it in their bum oh my god people like light bulbs fucking like staplers and i was like dad what is the biggest thing you had to pull out of a bum and he was like well it was love eggs which you know they're supposed to go up there but they were huge there's three of them getting incrementally bigger right and they're all connected with this like leather strap and as Daz is pulling them out it snapped so he had to go in like he was birthing a cow and pull it out oh my god I know I know what the fuck okay right we're not king shaming anybody you want to fucking stick things up there go nuts but wow if you want to fucking stick things up there, go nuts. But wow. If you want to stick things up there, just make sure you can get them out again. I mean, that's not much to ask.

Yeah, have a fucking exit strategy. Fucking hell. Oh my God, that's a lot. Oh my God, I know. Jesus. Shout out to Dr. Daz. Right, I've got distracted by bumholes, as usual. And when they were in the car together, Wilfried told Sabine to drive over the speed limit. to Dr. Daz. Right. Got distracted by bumholes, as usual.

And when they were in the car together, Wilfried told Sabine to drive over the speed limit. He never actually got a driver's license, so she did all of the driving. And when she refused once to speed, he bit her ear and nose so hard that they started to gush with blood. He's like a fucking animal.

He's just so, like, feral. Feral is the correct term, yeah. And throughout all of this abuse, just when Sabine thought it could not get any worse, Wilfried's other girlfriend, Michaela, who hasn't gone anywhere, by the way, she's still been on the scene throughout this whole entire situation. And she's also now pregnant. Oh, great. And because she's pregnant and also just probably wants to keep an eye on Wilfried, she decides she's going to move in with him and Sabine. Excellent.

What a wholesome place to be pregnant and then bring a child into the situation. Yeah, but Michaela's also an absolute wrong-in. She's not moving in to protect Sabine from anything. She actually just joined in with the abuse and they sort of have this weird, throuple, sadistic situation going on. So Wilfried's very much the initiator, but Michaela helps him. She's the tool in the abuse. So together, Wilfred and Michaela subjected Sabine to all forms of torture. We're talking like beatings, tying her to the radiator, burning her with acid, etc, etc, etc. Sabine would be made to crawl on the floor on all fours and submit to Wilfred as his slave.

And after about a year of this, Sabine's family realised that something must be very wrong because she stopped all communication with them. And thankfully, in this particular case, Sabine's family managed to save her from Wilfried and Michaela's clutches. But she would be the only one to escape in that way because there are more. When Sabine was freed, she went to the police in 1995. Wilfried and Michaela stood trial on charges of dangerous bodily harm, deprivation of liberty, and coercion. Wilfried was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison, whereas Michaela only received nine months probation. If you are wondering why Wilfried faced no sexual assault or rape charges, it is because at the time in Germany, a husband could not rape his wife

in the eyes of the law because we're in the early 90s UK that only got changed in 1991 so we are not much better off than them it might have been 1990 I can't remember wow either one early 90s even in the UK that's horrific so that would have been the same situation here so they go away they do their time they come back out and it wasn't long before they were both on the outside world again that Wilfried went back to posting Lonely Hearts ads in papers to replace the victim who he had lost. And that's how on January the 17th, 1999, he met a woman called Angelica. And we've already met Angelica. She's the woman who had been driving the car at the start of the show. And it is Wilfried in the car as well. I don't know why I made such a big deal out of that. It is him.

It's obviously him. What's that? Angelica had been born in 1917 and had a fairly unremarkable childhood. She grew up on a farm in somewhere called Bad Slavsflön. Slavsflön. It literally is B-A-D space and then Slavsflön. What does bad mean in German? I don't know.

But in Costa Rica, there's a whole area called Malpais, which means bad country. Oh, it's actually very nice there. Oh, it's like kind of like Greenland Iceland situation. Yeah, I think maybe you can't grow stuff there. Maybe that's why. Maybe. What's going on in Bad Slauson? Someone tell us apart from Angelica being born there. Just some farms, I think, you know. I mean, if you live in Bad Slauson, let's know. Oh, man, I want to go't I? I mean, if you live in Bad Slasvlin, let us know. Oh, man, I want to go to Berlin so bad.

Someone book us. Yeah, please. Can I use someone's house? Anyway, people who knew Angelica described her as ordinary, conscientious, frugal,

which is a weird thing to say. Like, I don't think I, like, if they're like, oh, like, what about, tell us a little bit about Emma Johnson. Oh, you know what? Real tight arse.

I just wouldn't, that's not something I would say about someone. Maybe it's like if they are remarkably so and that is their defining characteristic, which I don't know. It's a weird personality trait to be your predominant one.

But yeah, sure. Go with it. It's like when people fucking like go through the bill and just like calculate what everyone, I would literally rather pay the whole bill twice than sit through that fucking bullshit. I hate it. I can't stand it. That's Angelica. So Angelica was later assessed by a forensic psychologist as well. Don't know if it was the

same one who did Wilfried, but they said that Angelica had an IQ of 120, which is well above average. Perhaps she liked animals and stuff. But a real turning point in Angelica's life was the death of her father, which left her completely distraught. And she's quoted as saying, he was the only person to ever cuddle me. She doesn't bode particularly well. No, it's not a great start, is it? And soon after her father's death, Angelica's mother, who she did not have a particularly good relationship with, suggested that it was time for Angelica to find a husband and move out of her house. Pretty harsh. Pretty harsh, Mama Angelica. But maybe she was just a frosty woman.

Yeah, get out. And that is why Angelica replied to Wilfried's Lonely Hearts ad. And Angelica said that when she met Wilfried, it was love at first sight. And I do not know how this man continues to do this, but he does. Maybe we should just start doing Lonely Hearts ads. I don't know. Clearly, it's, um, what's the word? Working?

No, thank you. I would have been able to think of that one on my own. I can't, no, word gone. And also, another sign for Angelica that Wilfried was the man for her was that his birthday happened to be the anniversary of her dad's death, which she looked at that as a bit of a sign. I mean, I know most people go on to marry just like younger versions of their dads, but like this is a bit much. Like I wouldn't specifically look for as someone with a dead dad.

I would not be like, oh my God, your birthday is that day. Amazing. Like I just, no. Is that not a deal maker for you? Yes. Is it not? Must be born on the anniversary of my dad's death also double points if you're irish and called john just the most morbid dating cool let's do it so in his usual style wilfred was nice to angelica for a little bit but then he started what he called combat moves on her and that is supposedly so she could

learn to defend herself. So he'd hit her, throw her on the floor, twist her fingers and her arms and yell at her that she needed to fight back. And then they went on to do something that would become a regular occurrence. And it's called Deckhexer. And that means in German, blanket tag. Blanket tag? Blanket tag, yep. That's like me on a Sunday.anket tag. Blanket tag? Blanket tag, yep. That's like me on a Sunday.

That's me most of the time. I just walk around my house with like a blanket cape. Don't look at me. Oh, me too. And a hot water bottle because I'm cold. But I'm sure it's much worse than that.

And I'll stop laughing. Oh, yeah, it's quite bad. Yeah, it's a bit Candice Newmaker, honestly. Wilfried would wrap Angelica up in blankets and towels until she couldn't breathe. And then he would lie on top of her until she passed out. So exactly what happened to Candice Newmaker, actually, except she's not a child.

She's a woman. It's so weird because he's like really so much lower IQ than her. She's like more than double his IQ, which I guess just goes to prove like IQ doesn't really mean anything. But like, he just rules this whole situation with like brute force, but she seems reasonably intelligent and normal compared to him up until she meets him. Weird. I know. Something else we should know about Wilfried is that he was in rather a lot of debt and he squirreled out that Angelica had 80,000 euros in savings because she was such

a tight ass. Her frugalness makes sense now. Yeah. And when he found that out, Wilfred didn't waste any time getting down on one knee because when you get married, his debt is your debt. So they got married just two months after they met each other. You need to see bank statements, ladies. Yes. Always ask. Always find out. Don't ask. Holla, we want prenup. That's what you need to do. It's something that you need to have. And literally, I'm not going to do it, but I really want to do the whole thing,

but I'm just not. So after they got married, they lived in an apartment together in somewhere called Detmold, and they survived solely off Angelica's savings and government welfare. And the abuse in this situation only escalated. And they carried on

like this for quite some time until some point in about 2006, they divorced for financial reasons, but crucially, they stayed together. So they just got legally divorced, but they're still living together. They're still in this like abusive relationship. And while they're in this divorce, not divorce, they engaged in some very disturbing acts of animal cruelty. In 2009, they had two cats. But when one of them scratched Wilfred, Angelica put it into a tumble dryer and turned it on and just left the cat in there till it died. Fucking hell. I don't have a cat or a tumble dryer, but it's something I get worried because cats like sit in stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's really true. Like when you accidentally turn it on. That's a really good

point. But at least it's better with a tumble dryer because you can open them if it's a washing machine they're in there for an hour and a half oh my god hope you can swim mittens oh my god i feel really unwell now yeah no it's just something i think about quite a lot intrusive thoughts with hannah it's good to worry about everything though even when you don't have a cat or a tumble dryer it's just to get the worry in you know yeah exactly totally we watched caliber when we were away which talk about in the under the duvet as well i was describing it to my friend and i was like oh no you should watch it have you ever worried about hitting a child with your car and he was like yeah but only when i'm not driving i was like that's exactly what the film makes you feel for an hour and a half

yeah exactly exactly if you haven't watched it go watch it and then come listen to us talk about it on Under the Duvet this week. It's good. It's on the Netflix. The couple also had a Rottweiler called Luna that Angelica strangled to death with a rope because Wilfrey told her to. A Rottweiler? Fucking hell, they've got well thick necks. How are you strangling it to death, you absolute monster? My God. I'm sad. Not done. It's going to get more sad, I'm afraid.

Oh, no. More dogs? Yep. Another dog. Oh, no. Angelica tied it up in the bathroom and shot it multiple times with an air rifle, but it didn't actually die. It just vomited loads of blood. So Wilfred cut its throat with a kitchen knife.

What? So this is probably the worst one. Angelica bit a cat to death with her mouth. And then when it was dead, she gave it to some pigs to eat. What? I know, I know, I know. But she is frugal though. She really knows how to save that money.

Oh my God. Just feed your beloved family pets to the farmyard stock. Fucking hell. You don't need your own sandwiches. Just eat the cat that you took in from the street. Maybe this was too much for even Wilfried because he started to post Lonely Hearts ads again. And in 2008, he met another woman called Katty and love bombed the shit out of her again. And then he married her within weeks as usual. How? How is this horrible, disgusting man who does all these horrible, disgusting things and has like a zero IQ marrying all these random women?

What's going on? It's because... Love bombing works? Well, love bombing works. We both know that's a fact. And he used a picture of himself when he was much, much younger. The classic. And he's lying on a sofa wearing teeny tiny shorts. What was le classic in German again?

People kept posting, yeah, du classiker. So I think it's like when you take a really good nude and then you're like, okay, well, I'm just going to put that on the later base. That's going to come in handy later on. It's like he took one good picture of himself and just used it for everything, like on his CV. Makes sense. Delightful. Outstanding. That's why you've got to get them on Instagram, ladies, so you can have a look at all of the pictures from all of the angles and then make up your mind. That's the best dating advice you'd ever given me. Precisely. Just do blanket hag on a Sunday. Stalk him on Instagram. Not do blanket hag, just get the blanket and be a hag on the sofa, I meant. And not choke someone to death with a blanket. That's not going to further you in finding the one, I'm afraid.

Anyway. Angelica's still kicking around and Wilfred also started to abuse Katie and apparently he would rape Angelica and then go and rape Katie immediately afterwards. If Angelica didn't join in on the abuse, Wilfred would hurt her as well. But given all of her animal nomming I start to wonder whether how much of this is like a victim victi situation and obviously it's difficult to know and obviously she has been abused as well and abused people sometimes go on to abuse other people but animals didn't show up in the situation until Angelica was there exactly Angelica began torturing Cassie as well with pepper spray and she shaved her hair and her eyebrows off there's probably quite a few reasons for this obviously the number one being is that it's abusive secondly perhaps she was

trying to make her less attracted to wilfred because she was jealous thirdly it's a way of taking away someone's identity yeah she's more like intellectual with her abuse than wilfred who just fucking like wraps you in a blanket until you pass out. Wilfred went on to diagnose Katty with epilepsy, despite having zero training, obviously. And then he would force feed her mystery medication on a daily basis. We have absolutely no idea what that was or what it did to her. And apparently in 2009, when Wilfred threatened to murder Katty, she got help from a neighbour who contacted her family and then her brothers came to rescue her. She went to the police, but unbelievably, nothing came of it. In 2010, Angelica and Wilfried moved to Hoxter

Bosseborn, into the farmhouse that would later become the most notorious house in the entirety of Germany. In their new home, Wilfried began subjecting Angelica to a new violent act named Tittenbieben. Would you like to guess? Oh God. Something about her breasts. That's probably horrible. Yes, exactly. It's literally tit biting is what it is. Isn't German great? I love German. I just love it. I love it. Maybe I should marry a German. They're tall. Yep. I'm still digesting this, but yes, you're right. They are tall. Just fucking mad for it, man. You can't stop.

Just one thing on the brain. So yeah, as the name suggests, it's where he would bite her breasts so hard that they bled. And on several occasions, he almost bit her nipples entirely off. Oh my God. Fuck off. And as soon as they lived in the House of Horrors, they started placing more Lonely Hearts ads in newspapers in Germany and also in the Czech Republic. Angelica was just as keen to find another woman to join the household

as Wilfried was, because that meant she would get less of it, I think. And also because I think she quite enjoyed it. I also think that because they capture women, and then she gets to be involved in the abuse, and then they leave, she feels like she's the superior one. She's the mainstay. She's the one he really wants. They're just temporary. And they can't hack it. Yes, exactly.

When they moved into their farmhouse, instead of telling their neighbours that they were in a relationship, which they were, they said that they were siblings. And they also said this in all of the Lonely Hearts ads. Some of the ads says that Wilfried was a farmer looking for a wife or a hot single looking for a committed long-term relationship. And in November 2011, the couple found their next victim, a woman called Christelle. They were tortured Christelle for six months. She answered one of the farmer looking for wife ads. And within the first few weeks, just like the other ladies before her, she was head over heels in love with shorts wearing Wilfried. She was so in love with him that she didn't care about the moldy damp

rundown farmhouse or the fact that Wilfried slept in the living room with his quote unquote sister. Perfect in every way, but sleep in a bed with her sister. That's a deal breaker. Yeah, no, deal breaker. Obviously, he couldn't keep up this facade for very long and he started to abuse Christelle just like all of the other women. Christelle was expected to finance Wilfred and Angelica's lives and also be their slave. Any sign of disobedience was met with abuse and torture. They'd kick her, punch her, put her hands in ice water,

chain her up naked in the pigsty outside, which it's November in Germany, which can be as cold as minus five or 23 degrees Fahrenheit for our American listeners. It's cold. It's fucking cold. Christelle was also made to sleep on the floor without pillows or a blanket, and she was forbidden to use the bathroom. She shared a litter box with the cat. Angelica once again shaved off Christelle's hair and eyebrows, and she confiscated Christelle's ID, her phone, wallet, bank cards, driver's license and travel bag and ran through all of her savings. Maybe hold your breath for this one. Wilfrid would make Christelle lick his feet. And once he hit her so hard in the

face with a shovel, she fell to the floor and then he choked her whilst laughing. This went on for about four months. The day after Christelle had suffered the blow from the shovel, she asked if she could go home. And her captors were like, yeah, that's fine. Off you go. But they made her sign a waiver before she left, stating, quote, there was no quarrel, assault, rape or attack between us. We separated by mutual agreement. I got bruises from falling on the stairs myself. Okay. I feel like this is yet another case of people putting too much faith in what a waiver can do for you legally. Wow. After she signed the waiver, they drove Christelle to the train station. This is a real

example of just how detached they are from reality. On the way to the station, they went into a police station so that an officer could bear witness to the signing of this waiver. Right. Just to make it really fucking ironclad. Yeah. And apparently the police officer was like, nothing to see here. This doesn't seem strange at all. They didn't follow up on it. They did just refuse to be a witness and turned them away, which I think follow up on it. Props just have a look. Just put in a call. Yeah. Just have a little gander.

It's not going to hurt. They just found a random person who was willing to sign it as a witness at the train station, in fact. Excellent. They got away with that one. Good. So Christelle, bad times, having a terrible time. But it is not even close, I'm afraid, to the next one.

The next one was called Anika. She was a 33-year-old housekeeper in a nursing home. And she met Wilfried, who by this point was 46 years old, again through a Lonely Hearts ad. They met in 2013 and exactly the same things happened. She falls in love with him. She moves into the farmhouse. She doesn't mind about the fact that he lives with his sister

and sleeps in the same bed as her. And they get engaged super quickly. And then in October, they're married. Anika's mum found out that her daughter was married because Anika rang her and introduced herself with her new surname. Her mum drove to Hoxter with a congratulations card, but she had to just leave it outside because no one answered the door. From then on, the only way Anika would communicate with her mum was by text. So this is what they did to Anika. They'd pour boiling water over her, electrocute her with a stun gun and chain her to the radiator or the bath in the basement

every night. God, it's like the worst horror movie. Once Angelica chained Anika face down in the bath and tried drowning her by turning on the taps, but Wilfried pulled her off at the last moment. They'd filmed themselves humiliating Anika by screaming at her, laughing at her, making her dance and crawl around. The police would later recover hundreds of hours of footage of this. Anika spent her life in the bath, face down, with her hands and feet tied behind her back, so forcefully that her wounds bled and oozed. She couldn't walk anymore.

Angelica would later recall watching Anika lying there, face down, trying to pull a rope around her neck and trying to strangle herself. One day, Anika tried to escape. She tried to stand up, but her body was so weak that she immediately collapsed and smashed her head on the ground. Anika died the following night, on the 4th of August 2014, chained in the bath. Wilfried and Angelica initially decided that they would freeze her body. Angelica would recount in her confession that, quote, Wilfried never touches raw dead meat, so I hid the body in the freezer under the groceries. Angelica also calmly mentioned

that she pushed Anika's head further into the freezer to make room for a frozen pizza. Excellent. Just in the way. Just move that head out of the way. I mean, it's always so inconvenient when you've got your fucking pizzas in there and you've got to hide a dead body of a woman you murdered.

And then, after she's been in the freezer for a while, Angelica cut Anika up with a hacksaw and a hatchet and then threw them onto the fireplace. And then she added that, surprisingly, this particular fire made the living room much warmer than normal. Wow, that's good. Fucking hell. And then, after they had burned her in the fireplace, they drove around Hoxter scattering Anika's ashes out of the window. So she's never found,

unsurprisingly. Wilfried then texts Anika's mum from her phone saying that she'd moved to Amsterdam and then he'd regularly text her saying, I'm fine, don't worry, right up until he's eventually arrested. But it's not yet. In February 2016, this is the last one, I promise, Wilfried and Angelica met their final victim, 41-year-old mother of two, Suzanne, from Bad Gandersheim, another bad one, just an hour away from Huxter. And it's exactly the same thing happens totally again.

She falls in love. She moves into the farmhouse. She's not worried about the weird sister. And then he starts to abuse her. On the 21st of april just two months after having met wilfred suzanne was so badly injured from a head injury that angelica and wilfred decided that it would be best to drive her to her own apartment and leave her there to die suzanne was the woman with the shaved head in the back of the opal astra who died in the hospital

that evening that we started right at the top of my story. You think it's going to be every single other one? Yeah. How many are there total? Like six? So many. But this is the one we started with. So obviously, Anika's mother turned on the television a couple of weeks after this and saw her son-in-law next to his, air quotes, sister and the house that she had been to and she thought her daughter had been happily married there. She has no idea that Anika's dead, because she'd still been texting her. So she rang up a family friend who happened to be a policeman, and she asked what had happened to Anika,

and the policeman just told her straight away that she was dead, not living in Amsterdam at all. On the 21st of September 2016, charges of murder by omission were brought against Wilfried and Angelica. And murder by omission were brought against Wilfried and Angelica. And murder by omission is an interesting thing. It's basically when you know that your actions could lead this person to die and you don't do anything about them. You continue to act in the same way. Interesting.

So like a crime by omission is like, you know that your actions will cause harm, but it's like in a roundabout way. It's like not paying child support is a crime by omission. Oh, okay. I see. Is that it? Fuck child support is a crime by omission. Oh, okay. I see. Is that it? Fuck.

They do all sorts of horrible shit. I mean, it's not the only charge they have, but it's the only murder charge they've ever been given. Sure. Okay. Got it. The trial began on the 26th of October and everyone was totally shocked by Angelica

because she just goes through, bish, bash, bosh, Dennis Nilsen style, this is everything we did. Forensic psychologists came to the conclusion that Angelica was fully responsible for her actions, not a victim of abuse forced to do everything she did. And they came to this conclusion because Angelica was completely unable to feel compassion for fellow human beings and therefore her victims.

She told the court that she didn't feel sorry for any of their victims because the women only had themselves to blame for the punishments. They just had to follow the rules. And she also pointed out that they could have gone home at any time if they just asked, like Christelle did. What the fuck? Like, that is the weirdest thing that they just let Christelle go when she asked to and they just made her sign that piece of paper. I'm like, does that prove that they're completely insane? I don't know. I have no idea. Like, I don't think there's a lot of consent going on. So Angelica, stone-cold psychopath. Wilfried, on the other hand, was deemed by the experts to be, quote,

moronic and therefore less culpable in a legal sense. Isn't that interesting? So with that, on the 5th of October 2018, both Wilfried and Angelica were found guilty of double murder and murder by omission. Angelica got 13 years and Wilfried was sentenced to 12 years in a psychiatric hospital. That doesn't feel... Well, hopefully, like, in 12 years' time, he's still not made. I don't know.

It doesn't seem like he should be out again. But if he's just sick, I don't know. I don't know. That feels like too much, though. Maybe just keep him in there. Yeah. Forever. It's a lot.

Would you like a fun fact to round it off and clean our brains always yes please this is very specific fun fact for you actually while the trial was going on in september 2017 a scottish builder and 12 friends bought the house in hoxton at auction no less for 5 000 quid and they used it they didn't do it up they grew grew 1,000 cannabis plants in it. And then they got arrested and got seven years. Wow. They almost got as long as Wilfred and Angelica did for growing some fucking weed. Excellent.

I think it speaks to how isolated that house was. Because if you can burn an entire human body and no one smells it, that's the perfect place to grow weed, in my opinion. That's what the Scottish builder realized. He was like, I'm fucking having it let's go guys well that was fucking harrowing yeah savage happy halloween yeah i hope you guys are all feeling sufficiently horrified after that i know i am i want to go not be talking about this anymore so thanks for

listening so yeah very quick reminders merch is out go get some if you would like to come be a patron come do that yeah buy some merch become a patron don't put your cat in the tumble dryer or just check it's not in there yes always check it's not in there and we will see you next time well we'll be doing this all over again exactly goodbye Goodbye. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about.

Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace,

from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery+. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go.

A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding and this time if all goes to plan we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.